According to a report in the Korean Herald, the South Korean Withus Lao Company has signed a 30-year concession for a 15,000 hectare eucalyptus plantation in Vientiane province. More than 90 per cent of the timber will be exported.

The US$150 million investment also includes more than 150 kilometres of roads, a new ferry port and a timber processing factory.

A leaked report earlier this year indicated serious problems in an FSC certified logging operation. FSC’s certifier, SmartWood, was oblivious to the problems – at the time the report was written, they hadn’t visited the forests they’d certified for three years.

Oji Paper, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, is moving into the Mekong Region. Oji Paper has established large-scale industrial tree plantation projects in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Here and elsewhere in the world the results are deforestation and destroyed livelihoods as the company replaces villagers’ forest and common land with its monocultures.